Wow Chas that turntable is really nice! I would like to get a nice Ortofon Vivo Blue Phono Cartridge or something like it. How much did your Audioquest "Ruby" cartridge cost you?
Oh, it's old -- like, early 1990s -- and I don't remember. I bought that as a package from Audio Advisor who had become the chief supplier of AR turntables in those years. I think the cartridge was a "low end of the high end" kind of thing, an inexpensive moving coil which AA had matched up very nicely with the tonearm and turntable. I've swapped it out a few times with a Shure V-15 Type V which for some reason I'd also acquired around that time, so neither one took the full brunt of my hours of record playing...which I really need to get back to, now that we're talking about it.